Other What currently makes your life awesome?

Something something have money to make money something

 

Just had notification that a bunch of orders that I placed for various bits and pieces are either out for delivery or have already been delivered.

Excellent news and a much-needed pick me up for the end of a very long and somewhat painful week. Now I just need to wait until just after 4pm when I can get home and grab them.

 

I invested a rather large sum into the company I work for. Expected return for the exit planned in 2028 is WAY beyond anything any bank wants to offer.

 

I paid the blood toll, but the engine and gearbox are now completely out of the 2003 RS courtesy of a bike jack. I was right, too, the rear main seal is leaking and has been for some time, so the work is justified.

Also there's a whacking great big toolbox on my bench. Now to buy all the organising foam and cut spanner slots..

 

What's the "oh, while I'm here I might as well...." list looking like?

 

I started fairly confident it was a rear main seal that needed doing. The inside of the bellhousing was gross, new clutch minimum. Flywheel looks pretty okay, could probably be resurfaced, but it's the OEM unit, there might be a better option for not much more.. Basically, a clutch and slave cylinder.

One of the piston heads looks like it's been treated poorly, but the bores look good and I can't feel any ridge. I feel like I can see a bit of crosshatching still but I'm no pro. So definitely pistons and rings. But I plan to make that someone else's problem, I don't trust myself with the measuring and whatnot, and that part is rather important. Head looks good, but since we're in the 'everything's apart' state, I'm tempted by some piper cams and vernier pulleys. We'll see what I can find that would work for this application. But that would also mean I'd want to put valve springs in it..

Manifolds look fine, I'm not tempted by a banana manifold (don't like the look, not chasing a number, seems fruitless), turbo definitely wants a rebuild kit throwing at it. Thermostat housing as the classic Mk1 cracks, so a new one of those - I found a nice metal one that, while not billet, looks better than any of the plastic grot.. Oil cooler looks a bit gnarly, so I'm thinking about an aftermarket setup there, and that means reworking the coolant hoses some, but that's no big deal. I replaced the power steering lines with AN lines a while back, but I think with the engine out of the bay I can do it better, so I need to get some steel braided teflon line so I can remake those hoses.

I want to get the driveshafts refurbed, since they're out. I don't see anything horrible so I could potentially do it myself, but ehhh.. That's a lot of grease I can't be bothered to deal with. Same for the lower arms, those are rusty as, so I'm thinking off for sandblasting and powdercoating. Which means I might as well drop the subframe and do that too, since it's not much better.. Polybushings all round, that was on the list anyway, the hubs are a bit rustycrusty so those need a bit of love, but that was also expected. Brake lines I replaced up front a while back, so those still look pretty okay.

Shocks look like they want replacing, original Sachs units from 20 years ago, so I'm thinking a nice set of KW v1's (I don't need all the fance of the v3's) should spruce that up.

The bay itself needs a nice tidy up, but that's not too bad. New engine/box mounts, because the old ones are old and gross. Also one was really stubborn and met Mr. Angle Grinder in an unfortunate way.

The exhaust needs gone, it's not Germany legal, and there's only one that is that I know of, so. Thinking about titanium heat-wrapping the factory downpipe and cat, because that doesn't seem to have a Germany legal version, so I need to keep that nice as long as possible.

But with a solid clean most of the bits that have come off look like they should go back together nicely enough. I might reroute the relocated battery cable while I have all this acces, too, because.. Why not?

So.. It's not all bad, but it's definitely not as "phew, slap that back together with some new seals" as I wanted.

 

I ate properly today for the first time in about two weeks. That wasn't just out of a can with a spoon.

 

Only gone and resurrected a motherboard I thought I'd killed with an attempted bios update.

 

Finally got Fallout:London running with some semblance of stability. Sank a couple of decent hours into it, so many fun little bits

 

Got asked by the boss to price up a tech refresh for all our meeting/conference/training rooms. Put together a presentation, showed them and they agreed to everything and ordered it all there and then
A couple of 75" 4k touchscreens and a proper videoconferencing setup, plus a whole bunch of other goodies should be arriving on a couple of pallets today.

Guess who's going to spend this week playing?

 

Assuming the order doesn't get cancelled (highest bidder with no reserve) I have bought a Dell R730 Server with dual 2650V4's, Dual 750W PSU's, 32GB of RAM and 16 1TB SAS Enterprise HD's (key here is the server has the bays and the caddies, drives are a bonus) for £130 including postage.

Got plans involving Intel (or equivilant) DC SAS 12Gb/s SSD's and ear defenders....



(No, I have no idea where I am going to put it as my last "server" was in a Tower case.. )

EDIT: Well, its been despatched.....
EDIT2: Being delivered this morning...

 

Finally got a shipping notice & tracking number for a book I kickstarted in May... 2023!
*pokes tracking website, hoping it's actually moving...*

 

Pffff, beginners.

I pre-ordered a book on Amazon in December 2016, it finally arrived in November 2023. And it was extremely disappointing.

 

500/30 co-codamol, right now I feel like an orange and green striped aardvark.

 

I’ve been smashing 30mg codeine, morphine and oxycodone after a recent operation, and as long as I took cyclizine beforehand for the nausea. I’d be flying for the rest of the day.

Good times, didn’t poop for a whole week though.

 

Update on the £127 server... Apart from the relatively old drives and the scratches on the outer shell I can't find a spec of dust inside, even the fans look like they have never been used. Internally it is complete with all PCI-E risers and RAM blanking plates. Need to dig a bit deeper internally to get a full understanding of what needs to go where.

Currently I am thinking of replacing 8 of the existing HD's with the SATA SSD's I have and then keeping the other 8 HD's in to act as storage pool(s). This will leave the 8 HD's not in use as hot spares. I have no idea (currently) of the health of the drives so makes more sense than trying to use all 16 at once. As noted above the caddies were what I wanted (surprisingly expensive when you need 16 of them) so the drives were just a bonus.

Not planning on storing anything important on this for now so not worried if the drives die or have issues out the gate.

Also, whilst the CPU's are what I expected in terms of the model, I had not realised they were 12 core models. I was working on the basis that they were 10 core models thus it was a nice bonus to see the extra 8 threads available.

Now looking into 2.5Gbe switches with 10Gbe SFP+ ports to replace my existing Gbe switches. This should grant 2.5Gbe for NAS access and 10Gbe between the server and my main PC. I don't need it but the switches and cables are actually reasonably priced, relatively speaking of course.

 

Having told myself I don't need a sports car when I sold the 911 mere months ago, I'm for reasons unbeknownst to me having an extended test drive this weekend of a very different proposition.



Just been for a little jaunt around the village to familiarise and thinking it may be safer to just leave it on the drive for the remainder.

Awesome or ruining? TBC...

 

It's a thing of beauty but no doubt a giant liability. Now if you don't mind the inevitible money pit it will turn out to be then who are we to stop you!

 

Not a fan of the truck personally, never really been my ‘thing’, but the other one… Yeah… I could see myself pootling that through the ~12 miles of traffic back & fore to work 2-3 days a week, the weekly shopping trip to Sainsbury’s. Totally practical as a daily driver

Light jocularity aside, that’s a very pretty car. Sure as hell wouldn’t want something like that parked up on a driveway around here, it’d be nicked within hours of first parking it up. But if I was in a position to be seriously considering buying that car then I wouldn’t be living around here in the first place .